Timeline of dinosaur history
1500's 1590's 1599 * The first dinosaurian entity, Rutellum, is named by Edward Lhuyd. 1600's 1640's 1640 *Robert Plot, the first man to illustrate a dinosaur fossil (Megalosaurus), is born. 1660's 1665 *Athanasius Kircher in his 1665 work explained fossils as giant bones as those belonging to extinct races of giant humans he named Mundus subterraneus. 1670's 1671 * Martin Lister, a member of London's Royal Society declares that despite their appearances, fossils were never part of any animals. 1677 * Robert Plot misinterprets a piece of Megalosaurus thigh bone as belonging to an elephant brought to Britain when the region was under the control of the Roman Empire. Despite recognizing this find as a petrified bone, he would later make the curious claim that fossils were made by God to decorate the inside of the earth, and were thus never part of real animals. ]] 1690's 1696 * Robert Plot dies, aged 56. 1699 * Dunkle R. Lhuyd, a Welsh naturalist, speculates that fossils form when the minute spawn of oceanic life is carried inland by air currents and is forced to germinate inside of rocks. 1700's 1705 *A paper by Robert Hooke is formally published posthumously. Its contents had originally been part of an earlier presentation to the Royal Society of London. This paper provided an argument against prevailing wisdom and advocated the idea that fossils were the remains of actual once-living organisms. Still, it was not enough to change the general consensus of his contemporaries in the scientific community.2 *In the second edition of an earlier book (published in 1677), Robert Plot concludes that fossils (which he referred to as "lapides sui generis") were not the remains of once-living organisms, but were stones made to look like organisms by some unknown force of nature instituted by God to decorate the inner parts of the earth the way flowers beautify its surface.2 1709 * Edward Lhuyd dies from pleurisy, aged 49 1720's 1728 *A catalogue of the large fossil collection belonging to Gresham College professor John Woodward is published posthumously. This catalogue contains fragments of dinosaur bone that may have belonged to a megalosaur. Because these specimens have been preserved in Cambridge's Sedgwick Museum, they are the oldest identifiably dinosaur fossil discovery whose location is still known. 1750's 1755 * Joshua Platt, a dealer in curiosities, discovers three large dinosaurian vertebrae at Stonesfield. He sends them off for examination to a Quaker botanist, merchant, and friend of Benjamin Franklin named Peter Collinson. Sadly, Collinson never gives them Platt's desired examination, and the fate and specific identity of the fossils remain unknown bnut he named it "Stonesfieldvenator". 1758 * Joshua Platt, a curiosity dealer, continued prospecting for fossils in Stonesfield. He met with success, finding an incomplete ''Megalosaurus thigh bone, which he noted and illustrated. This bone was included in the 1773 catalogue of his large personal fossil collection. * Dunkle Lhuyd dies. 1760's 1763 * The end of a Megalosaurus thighbone, previously misinterpreted by Robert Plot to be the remains of an elephant brought to Britain by the Romans, is subject to further confusion when Richard Brookes publishes a paper naming it Scrotum humanum. Although he meant this name metaphorically to describe the bone's appearance, this idea is taken seriously by French philosopher Jean-Baptiste Robinet, who believed that nature formed fossils in mimicry of portions of the human anatomy- such as the scrotum. * Brookes names Scrotum. 1769 * Georges Cuvier is born. 1770's 1773 * A unpublished catalogue of the fossil collection belonging to curiosity dealer Joshua Platt is compiled. A notable inclusion was a partial Megalosaurus thigh bone that Platt discovered in 1758. Sadly this fossil has been lost. 1776 ** The French Abbe Dicquemare discovers and briefly describes (without illustrating) large bones discovered in the Normandy Coast's Vaches Noires Cliffs. Paleontologist Philippe Taquet has suggested that these bones were probably dinosaurian. 1778 *Mosasaurus is disocvered for the first time. 1780's 1784 *William Buckland is born. 1787 * A fossil bone recovered from Cretaceous strata at Woodbury, New Jersey is discussed by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.Dodson, Peter (1997). "American Dinosaurs." Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. Edited by Phillip J. Currie and Kevin Padian. Academic Press. p. 10-13. The remains were only retrospectively identified as dinosaurian, as dinosaurs would not be scientifically recognized as a distinct group of reptiles until Sir Richard Owen presented his treatise on British fossil reptiles to the British Association in August of 1841. 1790's 1790 * Gideon Mantell is born. 1794 *The Cave bear is described 1800's 1808 *The famed Georges Cuvier publishes illustrations of vertebrae discovered near Honfleur. He mistakenly describes them as crocodilian, although later researchers have concluded that these remains almost certainly belonged to a theropod dinosaur.[ 1810's 1813 * Reverend William Fox is born. 1815 *Scientists identify Pterodactylus. 1820's 1820 * Dinosaur bones are discovered in Connecticut's red sandstones. The bones are so small that they were originally believed to be human remains. Richard Lull later properly identified them as dinosaurian and proposed that these fossils may have belonged to a coelurosaur. Later work by Peter Galton in 1976 determined that these fossils were actually from a prosauropod. 1821 *''Iguanodon'' fossils are displayed. They arouse little interest. 1824 *''Megalosaurus'' is formally dscribed. 1825 *Gideon Mantell describes Iguanodon]. ]] 1840's 1841 *Archaeopteryx lithographica, the first bird, is named, and described ,today.. 1870's c. 1876's * Dinosaur posture is taken a step forward from all dinosaurs being four legged to some being two legged. The two legged dinosaurs were always depicted as dragging their tails. '', one of the first bipedally accuate dinosaurs]] 1900's 1900 * ''Tyrannosaurus is discovered for the first time 1905 * Tyrannosaurus is named for the first time. 1970's Sometime around 1970 *Scientists prove that dinosaurs did not drag their tails. ]] 200's 2010's 2010 * The possible first bird, ''Protoavis is described. 2015 * Kulindadromeus is named and described, and it proves that a) all dinosaurs have a chance to be feathered and b) all dinosaurs evolved from a feathered ancestor. Category:Paleontology